Introduction to the Afd

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2020 The Rise of the AfD: An Analysis of Media Narratives & Tropes Brendan S Gerdts

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

THE RISE OF THE AFD:

AN ANALYSIS OF MEDIA NARRATIVES & TROPES

BRENDAN GERDTS

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Spring, 2020

The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Brendan Gerdts defended on April 15th, 2020.

______Dr. Birgit Maier-Katkin Thesis Director

______Dr. Avery Henry Outside Committee Member

______Dr. Christian Weber Committee Member

Table of Contents

Thesis Statement ...... 4

Introduction to the AfD ...... 6

Introduction to the New York Times and Deutsche Welle ...... 8

2017 Bundestag Election ...... 11

2018 Bavarian State Elections ...... 16

2019 Thuringian Election ...... 22

Conclusion ...... 27

Thesis Statement

Since its beginning in February 2013, the AfD has disrupted established German politics and experienced a great deal of scrutiny by the public (Goerres et al. 246). Worried about repeating the past, German politics and parliamentary discussions have experienced heightened awareness toward the rise of the far right and the tropes associated with ultra-conservative discourse and party programs. As the AfD gains more seats in state and national government its rise has caught the attention of the German public as well as the international community. To capture the narrative discourse about the AfD outside of Germany in the US, this study examines selected media reporting. Since it is beyond the scope of this thesis to look at every news outlet in America and Germany that reports on the rise of the AfD, two news outlets that are geared toward the American public have been selected. Specifically, the reporting by the German news outlet Deutsche Welle to English and German speaking audiences and by the New York Times, a major media outlet in America geared toward an English-speaking audience. This allows-by example-to explore two media representation of the AfD outside of Germany by both a German and American source. Whereas the New York Times primarily reports to an American audience and is based in New York - a diverse city with significant minority influences including a sizable

Jewish community, the Deutsche Welle is sponsored by the German government and reports to a more global audience that shows interest in German and European affairs. In both cases, the reporting from these news outlets is widely available to American audiences through the Internet and in the New York Times’ case also in print media. As this thesis explores reporting on the rise of the AfD to American audiences, the New York Times and Deutsche Welle provide material to analyze the media responses to the rise of the AfD and offer interesting insight from different

5 perspectives. Media txts are selected from articles published in a six-month period surrounding three separate elections in which the AfD competed: the 2017 Bundestag election, the 2018

Bavarian state election, and the 2019 Thuringian state election. The 2017 Bundestag election was selected since the AfD won seats in the national parliament for the first time. The two state elections were chosen as each election represents a different side of the former East-West divide in Germany; this allows insight into whether the former East and West Germany divide affected the narratives emerging in media about the election. The Thuringian election is also one dealing with what is regarded as one of the more extremist wings of the AfD making it a vital election to focus on.

By taking a closer look at narrative strategies and tropes in the New York Times and

Deutsche Welle, this analysis examines how the reporting of select stories about the AfD is structured, how these events are covered, what particular aspects about the AfD program, policies, and themes are selected, what concerns are raised, what type of arguments and narrative frames are put forth to represent this aspect of German politics to the American public. This study will uncover how the rise of the AfD is presented to the American public, whether the reporting is diverging or conveys similar narratives in each news outlet, what narrative strategies are employed, and which national topics are propelled. In the following, this thesis will first cover the beginnings of the AfD, then introduce the news outlets Deutsche Welle and New York

Times, give a brief introduction to the concepts of narratives and tropes, followed by a detailed analysis of select events and text examples from both news outlets and provide an investigation of the narrative strategy.

Introduction to the AfD

In February 2013, just a few months before the German federal elections, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) was formed by a group of 3 former CDU members: the lawyer Alexander

Gauland, the economist Bernd Lucke, and journalist Konrad Adam (Arzheimer 535). They published a manifesto urging Germany to rethink its connection to the European Union (Berning

17). The party program specifically states in its opening stanza, „Wir fordern eine geordnete

Auflösung des Euro-Währungsgebietes. Deutschland braucht den Euro nicht“ (Alternative 1; We are calling for the orderly dissolution of the Euro currency zone. Germany does not need the

Euro). During its founding years, the AfD focused primarily on economics and distancing

Germany from the European Union. However, the focus of the party broadened in the years between the 2013 and 2017 elections ensuring that the party quickly grew into a new political force on the far right of German politics. Carl Berning argues that this transformation turned the

AfD into a party that is:

Right-wing first in their rejection of individual and social equity and of political projects

that seek to achieve it; second in their opposition of the social integration of marginalized

groups; and third in their appeal to xenophobia, if not overt racism and anti-Semitism.

(Berning 16).

One recurring theme in media representation of the AfD is the question how the party fits into the preexisting conservative political discourse in Germany. Since the party is relatively far-right, it could be seen as the “missing link” between established German conservatism and the extreme right (Berbuir et al. 154). The descriptive quality of a “missing link” really speaks to the novel nature of the AfD for modern German politics which is due in part to a history of shunning the far-right.

To clarify on the importance of the emergence of the AfD it is important to understand the history of right wing ‘containment’ in Germany. David Art argues in his paper “The AfD and the

End of Containment in Germany?,” that Germany has experienced a ‘containment’ of the far right similar to the containment of Communism by America during the Cold War. He even goes so far as to suggest that:

Until the recent elections, Germany had executed containment close to perfection. The

history of every radical right party in postwar Germany— the National Democratic Party

(NPD), the Republikaner, the German People’s Union (DVU), the Schill Party, to name

some of the most successful ones—is one of sudden rise, factional infighting,

radicalization, and organizational decay. (Art 79).

Art notes that previously a variety of somewhat successful German far right parties have all succumb to both internal and external forces that are working against the success of far-right parties. He specifies the importance of factional infighting and organizational decay in the aforementioned article which points to how surprising it is that the AfD found electoral success.

While the AfD competed in the 2013 national elections, its success in the 2017 national elections is far more notable. The AfD only won the support of 4.7 percent of the vote in the

2013 elections, but it garnered 12.6 percent of the vote in the 2017 elections which allowed it to enter the Bundestag for the first time (Berning 18). That election catapulted the AfD to the forefront of German politics as it became the third largest party in the Bundestag, but it is important to understand that its support is more concentrated in the Eastern half of Germany with it winning up to 35 percent of the vote in Eastern elections and as low as 5 percent in Western elections (Kellerman 2). Still, its growth in those 4 years is astonishing, but not surprising. The

AfD went through a variety of shifts in that time going from a single-issue party focused on the

Euro to a party with a diverse platform increasingly focused on curbing immigration, and that shift is due primarily to a leadership conflict in the AfD (Berning 17-18).

In 2015, Bernd Lucke was ousted as co-chair of the party, and his departure took with him 5 of the 7 leading moderates in the party which left the far more radical Frauke Petry as the leader of the AfD (Arzheimer and Berning 3). Petry led the party away from its original tie to the single issue of the anti-Euro-campaign to racially motivated themes such as closing German borders to asylum seekers, a ban on mosques, and a variety of other extremist positions (Goerres et al. 246). Petry did attempt to moderate just a few months before the election by returning the party’s original focus on economics, but the party had already shifted to the far-right in a way that has come to define it (Berning 18). This shift coincided with the political rise of the party and has led it into the opposition in German politics which it continues to hold to this day.

Introduction to the New York Times and Deutsche Welle

While both the American and German news industries play host to a huge variety of publications, the New York Times (NYT) and Deutsche Welle (DW) were chosen for their wide- reaching audience. Both - NYT and DW - are well established news outlets, they are nationally and internationally recognized, while the NYT reaches primarily an English-speaking audience,

DW reaches out to a German and English-speaking audience worldwide, including the United

States. Both media outlets uphold a tradition of sympathizing with the political center of news reporting. For this reason, understanding the history of both publications will help to explain the narratives they adopt when writing about the AfD.

The New York Times was founded in 1851 by Henry J. Raymond and George Jones as a new newspaper for the rapidly growing New York City (Elmer 3 & 8). Raymond and Jones were both established men in the newspaper industry working at the New York Tribune before founding the New York Times. From this humble beginning, the New York Times would grow into a media giant. The NYT has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, it operates newsrooms in London and Hong Kong and 44 bureaus worldwide (Chokshi para. 1).

This makes it one of the more influential papers worldwide.

The NYT’s subscribers receive daily publications containing stories split into the following sections: News/editorials/opinions, New York (Metropolitan), Business, Sports, Arts,

Science, Styles, Home, Travel, and Other Features (Pérez-peña para. 2 & 5). However, the most well-known section is that of its news, editorials and opinions. The NYTimes is a renowned newspaper that finds its strength in hard-hitting, important, reporting. Most famously, the New

York Times was the original newspaper to attempt to publish the Pentagon Papers and stood before the Supreme Court of the United States of America to defend its freedom to do so. Since then, it has continued this focus on the important political and social stories of the day, but it has been criticized for having a liberal bias when reporting these stories (Watts 145). Despite that criticism, it remains one of the most important newspapers in the United States, and it is an excellent primary source for this study due to its extensive reporting on German issues to an

English-speaking audience.

For the purposes of this study, the Deutsche Welle will be analyzed as the representative of German media to English audiences. It was founded in 1953 in West Germany and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany (Masayuki 3). The Deutsche Welle is funded by the German government, but, under the Deutsche Welle Act, it is granted near full autonomy and ordered to

10 be independent (Masayuki 5). One of the important ways in which the German government influences the Deutsche Welle is in the fact that the DW wants to advance the German language; this is accomplished by dual language reporting. In the US, the DW delivers its reports in English and German, in other countries it reports in a variety of languages including Spanish and Arabic.

Throughout DW’s history, the medium of their reporting has gone through many changes.

The Deutsche Welle, in English ‘The German Wave’ began as a radio broadcast founded in postwar Germany. It has continued to produce radio shows in a variety of languages across the globe, but it has recently gone through a restructuring program reducing radio show time from

266 hours to 55 hours daily (Masayuki 2). This represents a shift in focus for the organization from radio to television production. The organization has also put focus on online reporting. Of particular importance for this study is the daily online reporting of the Deutsche Welle since

1994 (Masayuki 3). Its reporting focuses on a wide variety of topics ranging from culture and politics to science. While its strength is, traditionally, in broadcast media, its online articles represent a comparable medium to that of the NYT’s publications, and the fact that the DW presents many of its stories in English, from a German perspective qualifies it to be the 2nd primary source used for this paper.

By selecting several narratives in the reporting by the DW and NYT about the AfD, this study focuses on identifying narrative tropes in order to flesh out patterns, distinctions and similarities in the reporting by the two media sources. Tropes are implicit parts of narratives.

Molly Bloom explains in her 2019 article “Liminal Spaces, Titanium Braces” that a “Narrative is a means through which people recall experiences and place them into a meaningful series of events” (119). Narratives provide the basis on which tropes are constructed. They are, in the context of this thesis, the overarching stories told in the reporting by the DW and NYT on the rise

11 of the AfD. These narratives demonstrate how the news outlets explain the rise of the AfD in the three chosen elections. The tropes contained in these narratives point to underlying aspects and connections. Susan Stanford Friedman explains that, “A trope is not a story; but it may contain an “implied story” within its unnarrated figuration” (7). Tropes reveal implicit points, they imply meaning and can point to an underlying message. They help to frame the larger narratives about the rise of the AfD. This thesis looks at how certain tropes, in particular the trope of disaster, of demise, of threat, and the trope of Nazi Germany are presented in the reporting of these two news outlets.

2017 Bundestag Election

The 2017 German national Bundestag election propelled the AfD to centerstage in

German politics. As Berning notes in his paper, the party garnered 12.6 percent in this election, and that represented over 6 million votes which brought the AfD into the Bundestag for the first time in the party’s history (18). Such an achievement drew swift media coverage from around the globe, and both the New York Times and Deutsche Welle reported on the entry of the AfD into the

Bundestag. Interestingly, these narratives diverged in a few keyways that perpetuated different tropes in the reporting on the AfD.

The reporting by the New York Times initially focused on a crisis narrative for the

German center. Anna Sauerbrey, an international New York Times contributor, writes in her article, “In Germany, the Center Holds” on September 25th, 2017 that:

Sunday was a dark day for Germany. For the first time in its postwar history, a far-right

party won enough votes to enter the Bundestag. And not by a hair, either — the

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 12.6 percent, ahead of stalwart parties like the

Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, making it the third-largest caucus among

the seven represented in the Parliament. It’s shocking. It’s a catastrophe (Sauerbrey para.

1).

Here, she establishes the first narrative of the reporting around the 2017 Bundestag election and the AfD’s victory. That narrative conveys the notion that the AfD is a surging party that represents a clear threat to German democracy. Sauerbrey frames the AfD within the narrative that it is particularly threatening to the political establishment in Germany. While this is not a positive view of the AfD’s entry into the German parliament, this narrative both perpetuates the idea of the AfD as a political power and alerts its audience to the emergence of a new German far right. The AfD surfaces as a political party that is more popular than previously thought which provides a sense of legitimacy to the surging party. Sauerbrey combines this narrative with the beginnings of a trope that carries through much of the reporting on the 2017 Bundestag election which is the trope of disaster. At the end of the previous quote, she writes that the AfD’s success is, “shocking” and a “catastrophe” (Sauerbrey para. 1). This trope codes the narrative around the

AfD’s ascendance as a climactic event that is threatening and powerful, but, in large part, unexpected. This combination of the narrative of an ascendant AfD and the trope of disaster both draw significant interest and form the basis of much of the conversation surrounding the AfD within the New York Times.

It is interesting to note though, that the reporting by the NYT formed some narratives that, while not irreconcilable, were somewhat opposed. Amanda Taub, an editor and writer for the

New York Times, states in her article “What the Far Right’s Rise May Mean for Germany’s

Future” on September 26th, 2017 that, “The most important story of last weekend’s election in

Germany was not so much the rise of the AfD but the collapse of support for the country’s mainstream political parties, which lost more than 100 seats in the Bundestag, their worst result in the postwar era” (Taub para. 5). This introduces a second narrative that established itself quickly in the reporting about the AfD in the NYT, which is that the AfD’s success is less about the success of the AfD and more about the declining power of Angela Merkel and her centrist governing coalition. However, Taub’s use of the word “collapse” and the sense of urgency that develops from the sheer size of the loss the German center suffered both continue a trope of disaster even in this second narrative (Taub para. 5). This trope contributes to establish the significance of this loss. It also does not contradict the overarching narrative that the AfD is successful only through the failure of others, but is, otherwise presumed to be unable to stand on its own. The narrative of the AfD as a symptom rather than a problem in and off itself is a significantly powerful one that carries through much of the reporting of the New York Times, and it carries through, to some extent, into the reporting of the Deutsche Welle.

The Deutsche Welle offers narratives similar to that of the NYTimes in its reporting on the

2017 Bundestag elections. One place to see this is in the title of the September 25th, 2017 article

“German election results: Disappointing victory for Angela Merkel as CDU sinks, nationalist

AfD surges” by Elizabeth Schumacher, a reporter for the DW (Schumacher para. 20). The title itself reveals much of the narrative trope of demise published by the DW with a reference to

Merkel’s impending failure that gives rise to an emerging AfD. The order of these headlines shows, that the focus of the DW is not on the surging populism of the AfD but rather, it focuses on the problem of a collapsing center in German politics that is feeding the rise of this populist party. This fits in with the narrative of associating and, to some extent, blaming the rise of the

AfD on Merkel’s political failure. As a result, the reporting depicts the AfD as willing to utilize a declining Merkel for its political gain.

In addition to Merkel’s political failure Schumacher’s article introduces a third narrative, namely the xenophobic approach of the AfD that warns of a new force on the political stage with controversial opinions and a party ecstatic to take on the position of political opposition in parliament. She writes that the AfD:

…has taken an official stance against Islam, gay marriage and Germany's refugee policy,

as well as seen many of its members embroiled in anti-Semitic controversies, co-chair

Jörg Meuthen insisted the party is "neither racist nor xenophobic.” Meanwhile, the party's

Gauland promised to "hound" Merkel's government, saying the AfD would "reclaim"

Germany from its current leaders. Voted into 95 seats mostly by voters in Germany's

Eastern, former communist states, the AfD will certainly have the means to do so

(Schumacher para. 20).

This points to a core conflict between the AfD and previous German parties represented in parliament. Schumacher argues that the nationalistic and controversial nature of this new party is one that publicly denies any incitement of racism and xenophobia yet insists on expressing these views and is ready to pounce on the weakness shown by the government. In a sense, Schumacher portrays the AfD as a party ready to take advantage of political weakness in Germany pushing itself onto the political landscape at the expense of the CDU. Schumacher also shows Gauland’s use of the language of war by noting the use of the words “hound” and “reclaim” which adds to a trope that develops in later reporting which is the tying of the AfD to Germany’s more jingoistic past. Beyond this note of the language of war being used, the narrative Schumacher advances

15 shows similarities to the one perpetuated by the New York Times and its narrative of the AfD being a direct result of Merkel’s failure rather than a party successful in its own right.

There are, however, some nuances and details, such as the concern about racism and the threat of voters in the East, that the Deutsche Welle picks up while the New York Times does not.

The last sentence in the previous quote by Schumacher states that a large base of support for the

AfD comes from “Germany’s Eastern, formerly communist states” (Schumacher para. 20). This begins a further narrative that the AfD is appealing to a forgotten segment of the German electorate found in the poorer Eastern states which formerly belonged to the GDR. The concept of the AfD as a party that appeals to the Eastern states is one that cements it as a party of people who did not feel represented by the political parties of former West Germany. This narrative of geographic and socio-economic divergence driving the success of the AfD is developed by the

DW, but not the NYT.

The conflict between the AfD, an Eastern anti-establishment party, and the more established Western parties is also important to narratives about the 2017 election explored by the DW. Jefferson Chase a writer for the DW (Deutsche para. 2), writes in his October 23rd, 2017 article titled “The far-right AfD in the Bundestag: What you need to know”, that:

Traditionally, opposition parties in the Bundestag regard their function as criticizing the

government and not other opposition parties. Now, the other parties that do not end up

forming part of the government will also be concerned with putting the AfD in its place

(Chase “far-right” para. 22).

Chase expands on the narrative trope of the AfD as a true voice in a standalone party beset on all sides. This narrative isolates the AfD as a party uniquely antagonistic to all the others and

16 establishes it as the only true voice of opposition under this narrative. By displaying all the established parties as being heavily against the AfD, the DW picks up on a narrative that is, possibly, advantageous for the party. To some extent, its position as the primary opposing voice allows the AfD to continue its efforts to attract dissatisfied voters. By propelling this narrative, the DW possibly contributes to the AfD’s attraction to voters and expands on a nuance that the

NYT has not.

2018 Bavarian State Elections

A year after the 2017 Bundestag elections, the narratives used by both the DW and NYT continued to develop through reporting on the 2018 Bavarian election. Bavaria is a major state in

West Germany that is notoriously conservative which is why its election drew a lot of media attention. In response to the results, both the NYT and DW developed new and continued old narratives and tropes surrounding the AfD as part of a larger shift in reporting that began to treat the AfD more seriously.

The New York Times portrays the Bavarian 2018 state elections through a variety of articles. Katrin Bennhold was their primary reporter on the AfD throughout the Bavarian election. Bennhold is a native of Germany and heads the Berlin Bureau of the New York Times where she focuses most of her work on, “exploring the former Communist East and the rise of the far right” (Bennhold “Biography” para. 1). Throughout her reporting in articles such as “As

Voters on Left and Right Rebel, Glimpse of a Post-Merkel Germany, and Germany Without

Angela Merkel: Unthinkable? Think Again, She Says”, Bennhold advanced an argument that the

17 elections represent a strengthening of populist forces at the expense of a declining Merkel1

(Bennhold & Eddy 2018 para. 3). This picks up a similar narrative to the one that the NYT had previously established with their reporting of the Bundestag elections but pins the success of the

AfD more closely to Merkel’s supposed decline. She notes in her article As Voters on Left and

Right Rebel, Glimpse of a Post-Merkel Germany that the Bavarian Election “turned out to be a backlash against Ms. Merkel herself. Voters on both the left and the right are saying it is time for her and her government to go” (Bennhold and Eddy para. 1 & 2). The narrative emerging from these elections focuses increasingly on a rejection of Merkel as the primary driving force for the success of the AfD and other extreme parties. This narrative was furthered in the New York Times when they reported that voters in Bavaria were voting directly in opposition to Merkel which culminated in Bennhold declaring that, “The voters’ verdict was damning.” (Bennhold “Voters,”

2018 para. 12).

Bennhold’s focus on the German voters as well as the supposed general discontent with

Merkel’s refugee policy shifted the focus on media reporting about the AfD to a strengthening of populist parties in Germany. Specifically, Martin Florack notes that “People have the urge to see change” (Bennhold “Voters” 2018 para. 15). Bennhold notes that this was reflected in gains made by both the AfD and the Green Party with the two parties collectively winning 27.1 percent of the vote. Bennhold points to the significance of this by drawing a connection between state elections and a precarious political climate in Germany:

At any other moment in Germany, a regional election in Bavaria would be merely a

regional election in Bavaria. But in the current political climate, the vote is being closely

1 T C S U CSU M B T N Y Times reports on October 15th, 2018 that their share of the vote fell by ten points to 37 percent as the Alternative for Germany rose to 14 percent and the Greens won 17 percent of the vote.

watched as a referendum on Ms. Merkel’s migration policy — and a measure of how

much German and European politics are being reshuffled by feelings over migration, the

rise of the far right and the collapse of the political center (Bennhold “Migration” para.

5).

Bennhold draws a direct connection between the rise of the AfD and Merkel’s immigration policy here which helps to rationalize Merkel’s descent. It is important to get an understanding of this because it shows just how much of the reaction to the AfD following the 2018 Bavarian elections was blamed on Merkel and her policies for its success. Essentially, the NYT’s established a decisive narrative that argues that the AfD is a symptom of a larger referendum on

Merkel.

The New York Times narrative that the 2018 Bavarian election was a referendum on

Merkel is quite strong. Bennhold makes this clear when she expresses that “voters loudly pronounced on the ´grand coalition` she has come to personify: a capacious left-right governing alliance that has stifled debate between erstwhile political rivals” (Bennhold “Voters,” 2018 para. 9). While Bennhold notes the important caveat that the CDU does not directly compete in the Bavarian election, she propels a referendum election narrative. Her article notes that since the founding of the newest Grand Coalition2 in 2017, Merkel has become its symbol and therefore, was ultimately a deciding factor in voter’s choices (Art 1).

This narrative reveals how the NYT is framing the rise of the AfD as not just a rejection of

Merkel but of the entirety of the German establishment. This diverts attention from a public

2 The Grand Coalition is the name given to the coalition government formed between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. These are the two largest and most established German parties and represent the center-right and center-left respectively.

19 discussion about the AfD as an ideologically strong and potentially controversial party and continues to enforce the narrative that the AfD is strengthening as Merkel declines. The reporting by Bennhold and Eddy point to this when they write that the election “turned out to be a backlash against Ms. Merkel herself,” and when Bennhold writes that voters “on the left and right loudly pronounced on the ‘grand coalition’ she has come to personify” (Bennhold “Voters,” 2018 para.

9 & 12). It also reveals the trope that dominates reporting on the 2018 Bavarian state election which is the concept of a threat to the mainstream.

Throughout the narrative of a referendum on Merkel, the AfD is explained as a threat to the establishment and mainstream politics of Germany. Bennhold contributed to this by writing in the aforementioned quote that, the election was, “a measure of how much German and

European politics are being reshuffled by feelings over migration, the rise of the far right and the collapse of the political center” (Bennhold “Migration” para. 5). The narrative focus on a referendum on Merkel along with the trope of the AfD as a threat to the mainstream downplays the ideological success of the AfD and its appeal to voters in national and state elections. This narrative, however, is slightly different in the Deutsche Welle and its reporting on the 2018

Bavarian elections.

In comparison to the New York Times reporting, the Deutsche Welle has both similar and dissimilar narratives in their own reporting on the Bavarian 2018 elections. The clearest difference is the fact that the DW suggests that the AfD’s success is beginning to slow. One of the

DW’s editors, Rob Mudge, expresses this when he writes on October 15th, 2018, that “the mainstream parties’ debacle aside, the signs are that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland's

(AfD) meteoric rise and the accompanying hype could be coming to an end,” and, in the same article, he notes that the AfD secured 12.4 percent of the Bavarian vote in the 2017 federal

elections and only 10.2 percent in the 2018 state elections which he refers to as “not the breakthrough they [the AfD] were looking for” (Mudge para. 7). By using expressions such as

“meteoric rise” and “accompanying hype,” Mudge emphasizes the supposed momentum of the

AfD which makes it all the more telling when he finishes his thought. He argues that the relatively, unimpressive share of the vote the AfD garnered is indicative that the “hype could be coming to an end” (Mudge para. 7).

This narrative that the AfD is beginning to stumble and may be finally losing its momentum contrasts New York Times reporting that pins AfD success on Merkel’s declining voter support. Jefferson Chase, who has written for the DW since 2002, also propels Mudge’s narrative that the AfD was not as strong as expected. He writes about the 2018 Bavarian elections that:

Whatever the reasons, the Bavaria vote seems to have slightly slowed, if not halted, the

AfD's momentum. The success of the Greens shows that there are alternatives to the

traditional political mainstream on both the left and right in Germany, and that the mood

of the German populace has turned decisively against the national partnership between

Germany's traditional powerhouses, the CDU/CSU and the SPD (Chase para. 28).

Like Mudge, Chase states that the AfD’s momentum has been blunted, however, he also brings his narrative closer in line with the narrative proposed in the NYT’s reporting. By connecting the

AfD to a discussion of the Green Party and its success in the elections, Mudge mainstreams the

AfD as just another party gaining traction on both the left and right with a party program that opposes the centrist approach of the current government. This is similar to the narrative approach of Bennhold in her article “As Voters on Left and Right Rebel, Glimpse of a Post-Merkel

Germany”. Bennhold and Chase, place the AfD alongside the Green Party, to showcase a

21 narrative that these fringe parties are rising at the expense of the more traditional parties like the

CDU/CSU and SPD. In this way, Chase maintains the distinct narrative that the AfD is no longer surging, but also holds the seemingly counterintuitive concurrent opinion that the traditional parties are still losing ground to the AfD. Altogether, he advances a complex narrative that is sure only of two things: the rise of the AfD has slowed and the centrist parties are losing ground. That is similar to the narrative advanced by Bennhold.

Portraying the success of the AfD as a symptom of Merkel’s decline remains a strong narrative in the reporting by the Deutsche Welle which is evident in the previous article by Chase when he picks up on the decline of (former West) Germany’s traditional political parties the SPD and CDU (Chase para. 28). The DW furthers this narrative by succinctly pointing out the consequence of the decline of Merkel throughout the state elections held in 2018 when Chase writes in a second article on the Bavarian elections titled “2018: The year Trumpian disruption rocked German politics” published on December 31st, 2018 that:

In any case, after poor showings by conservatives in regional elections

in Bavaria and Hesse, Merkel surprised us in October by ruling out a further run for the

chancellorship in 2021, or for her party's leadership that December…By the end of

October, she had rung in the end of her own political career (Chase “2018” para. 13).

Here, Chase lays out the stakes of the shrinking support for Merkel’s conservatives and the rise of the AfD. It is not just about the surging political party; rather, the rise of the AfD has legitimate impacts on the CDU itself. That impact reveals, to some extent, the way in which the DW contributes to the trope of the AfD being a threat to the mainstream. Interestingly, the narrative structure that trope is couched in downplays the strength of the AfD, and it seems to sidestep the issue that many policies of the AfD may appeal to German voters. As with the NYT, the DW is

22 centering its narrative on the Bavarian 2018 elections on the effects the results have on Merkel rather than what they say about the appeal of the AfD to parts of the German voters. By refusing to engage directly with the popularity of the AfD, the DW joins the NYT in limiting the extent of the conversation about the election.

Through all of these narratives, it becomes clear that the differences between the NYT and

DW in reporting on the 2018 Bavarian State Election is both seen in nuance and focus on whether or not the results were positive for the AfD. These are both important distinctions which help to illuminate the goals and limitations of either company as they seek to be accessible to

American audiences. Clearly, the DW goes further in its analysis of this election, but the NYT offers surprisingly similar baseline narratives possibly showing that the distinctions between these media outlets’ narratives lie in the details.

2019 Thuringian Election

Whereas the Bavarian state election in 2018 revealed some of the political forces present in the economically sounder former West German states, it is interesting to look at the reception the AfD receives in a former East German state. The 2019 Thuringian state elections present an interesting case study of media reactions to the success of the AfD and the notoriety of its state party leader in Thuringia. Christoph Dörffel writes in an article titled “The 2019 State Election in

Thuringia and the Populist Threat that the AfD” won 23.4 percent of the vote in Thuringia, close to double the share of the national vote it won just 2 years prior in the 2017 Bundestag election, and that the party has a “particularly extremist…regional party chairperson” (78). Dörffel also notes in the same passage that these results were shared in other East German states of

Brandenburg and Saxony. The New York Times and Deutsche Welle responded to this success with varied narratives.

The NYT focuses most of its reporting surrounding the AfD in Thuringia’s 2019 election on the party’s regional leader Björn Höcke. In an article released on October 26th, 2019 by Katrin

Bennhold and Melissa Eddy, already the title points to how this narrative is established in the

NYT: ‘Hitler or Höcke?’ Germany’s Far-Right Party Radicalizes (Bennhold and Eddy “Hitler” para. 9 & 10). The inflammatory and sensational tone of the title reflects the politically charged nature of the 2019 Thuringian elections which foisted the conversation surrounding the AfD and

Höcke. While the question mark only suggests a Hitler – Höcke comparison, it catapults the person of Höcke in the center of the reporting and sets the tone for a new narrative in the reporting about the AfD. It also sets up another trope that surrounds reporting on the AfD which is an implied connection to Nazi Germany.

Bennhold and Eddy link the focus on Höcke and his political rise directly to an overall radicalization of the party. By quoting an expert on right extremism, the article succinctly summarizes the concern:

‘These elections matter symbolically,’ said Matthias Quent, an expert and author on far-

right extremism and director of an institute that studies democracy and civil society in

Thuringia. ‘Höcke’s extremist wing has been gaining influence inside the party from its

eastern base.’

Nationwide, the AfD may be flatlining, Mr. Quent said. But, he added, ‘it is radicalizing’

(Bennhold and Eddy “Hitler” para. 9 & 10).

Here a new narrative emerges in the writing by the NYTimes that is distinctly different from the narratives that had been constructed in the wake of the 2018 Bavarian election. Rather than framing this election as a referendum on Merkel with a surging AfD, Quent, and by extension the

NYT, is arguing that the party is beginning to radicalize as it continues to flatline. This marks a major shift in the reporting as the politics of the AfD are receiving more attention; a sense of urgency and fear are attached to the rise of the AfD and its role in politics in Thuringia and

Germany as a whole.

Outside of this general narrative of radicalization, the New York Times also picks up on the narrative that former East German states are particularly receptive to the political program of the AfD. In an article titled Election in Germany Helps Far Right Tighten Its Grip in the East published on October 27th, 2019, Bennhold and Eddy explain the strength of the AfD:

‘The people of Thuringia have voted for a Turnaround 2.0,’ an elated Mr. Höcke said on

Sunday night, using his party’s main campaign slogan. It is a play on the term Germans

use to refer to the fall of Communism and German reunification, and it taps into Eastern

resentments three decades later’” (Bennhold and Eddy “Election” para. 4).

Bennhold and Eddy call for a narrative that focuses on the popularity of the AfD in East

Germany and suggest that the AfD’s success is based on the anger and resentments lingering since integration with the West. This is proposed as the driving force behind the success of the

AfD and Höcke in Thuringia and the rest of former East Germany.

Bennhold and Eddy continue this narrative as they home in on the voters at the heart of the AfD’s success in Thuringia. By quoting Barbara Fiedler, a resident of Thuringia, who at an

AfD rally said, “now that I am retired after working for 40 years, I can barely pay for basics,

while the newcomers are given so much. That isn’t right. It makes people really angry”

(Bennhold and Eddy “Election” para. 22) the article completes the shift in attention to the AfD’s appeal to the voters. In a strange twist, Bennhold and Eddy, move focus back on one of the AfD’s earlier themes that highlight economic disparity and social sentiments and show their appeal to

AfD voters who feel behind and abandoned by the other political parties. That type of voter’s comment and its reporting by the NYT provides support to the narrative that the AfD is connecting to disgruntled voters in former East German states, and it does so in a way conducive to empathy. That is a far more positive narrative for the AfD than the previous ones the NYT has put forth. Furthermore, this narrative trope is fleshed out even further by the DW.

The narratives by the Deutsche Welle following the 2019 Thuringian elections are similar to those of the New York Times. Interestingly, the news department, not the editorial section, of the DW continues the narrative the NYT supported that the AfD in Thuringia is dominated by the personality of Björn Höcke when they write in their article titled “Germany's Left Party Tops

Thuringia Election, Far-Right AfD Surges to Second”:

The populist AfD party in Thuringia is led by Björn Höcke, who often draws attention to

himself with firebrand statements. Höcke has notably criticized the Holocaust memorial

in Berlin, describing it as a "memorial of shame" and called for a "reversal" of Germany's

culture of remembrance” (Deutsche Welle “Germany’s” para. 6).

By focusing immediately on the personality of the AfD party leader in Thuringia, the DW is, to some extent, conflating the party with its leader. Focusing on the leader rather than a sympathetic voter provides a more negative view of the AfD. It sidesteps the success of the party for a focus on the morally reprehensible actions and beliefs of its leader while not fully engaging with the forces driving his success. It also contributes to a trope of tying the AfD to Nazi Germany and

26 past far right movements by highlighting the more controversial cultural opinions of Höcke. This choice to focus on the AfD’s regional leader and his controversial opinions on German history sidesteps the success of the AfD while also tying it implicitly to the Third Reich and Nazism.

However, the DW goes on to address other narratives in other articles that construct a narrative about AfD supporters in Thuringia similar to that of the NYT narrative surrounding the success of the AfD in former East German states, but the DW’s narrative picks up on a slight nuance missed in the NYT narrative.

The Deutsche Welle attributes much of the success of the AfD in Thuringia’s 2019 election to its success at marketing to German expellees and their families. These expellees were originally some 12 million ethnic Germans expelled from the lands formerly occupied and owned by Germany but were granted to other nations following World War II, most notably

Poland (Levy et al. 1). With this the DW picks up a topic that is highly controversial and politically charged in German politics since the end of WWII. In an article titled “Germany's Far-

Right AfD Aims at a Forgotten Demographic” published on October 27th, 2019, James Jackson writes about the expellees that, “their expulsion has remained a constant theme in many families of expellees. Although their descendants might have all the outer signs of a successfully integrated minority, many of them still feel they are in a parallel society even up to the third generation” (Jackson para. 15). It is this sense of being in a parallel society that the DW argues is a sign of a dangerous radicalization of this party and its threat to move society and political discourse to the far right. This narrative portrays the AfD as a party that seeks the support of the disaffected and forgotten, whose political interest has the potential to ignite a crisis not only in

Germany but also with its neighbors. Höcke’s appeals to German nationalism and rejection of

Germany’s “culture of remembrance”, as well as the AfD’s attempts to appeal to German

27 expellees are all implicitly tied to the Nazi regime and its terrible legacy. In this way, the trope of

AfD as invoking Nazi Germany has been placed next to previous tropes of disaster, demise, and threat to mainstream and begins to echo of German Nationalism in the 30s and 40s.

While NYT and DW approach their reporting on the AfD’s success in Thuringia in a similar fashion, it is interesting to observe that there is a more nuanced reporting by the DW as seen in the case of pointing out the AfD’s attempt to appeal to expellees. Jackson notes that the

AfD’s Bundestag members have started a group dedicated to working in the interests of the expellees on a national level in order to shore up support amongst this minority. By working towards the benefit of this group and expressing nationalistic views, the DW argues that the AfD has made inroads with this vital community, and, in doing so, the AfD is radicalizing German politics and the German public.

Conclusion

This paper has set out to examine narratives about the rise of the AfD in German politics as well as the tropes of disaster, of demise, of threat, and of Nazi Germany as these are reported to the American public by the New York Times and Deutsche Welle. It has become clear that there are diverging as well as similar narratives about the rise of the AfD. Articles by the New

York Times and Deutsche Welle reveal that the narratives and tropes portrayed to the American public portray the AfD as a party with dangerous ideas to the far right of the current German political landscape which is taking advantage of a declining political center with Merkel as a target. The reporting has at times also focused on the more positive aspect of the AfD by emphasizing its strength to attract voters among some sections of the German public. However,

28 this study of NYT and DW has shown that the narrative of the AfD as a surging party with a problematic appeal to voters is not the only narrative pushed by the media. Another major narrative portrayed to the American public is that of the AfD as a party of opportunity latching onto a declining Merkel as a way to drive its own political success. This narrative was found most extensively in the coverage of Bavaria’s 2018 state elections, and it implicitly downplays the success of the AfD. By turning the focus on Merkel and the CDU/CSU, the media narratives helped to propel a more critical view of the established political forces in Germany with the AfD being discussed more as a symptom than the problem itself. This along with the portrayal of the

AfD as a surging extremist party appealing to politically forgotten sections of the German public dominated the narratives that the NYT and DW used to portray the party to the American media.

Through all of these election narratives, there was also another development occurring in the reporting on the rise of the AfD which is visible in the changing tropes that occur in the reporting. In the Bundestag election, the primary trope was the implicit connection to catastrophe and collapse which viewed the AfD’s rise through a lens of being a climactic event that came out of nowhere. In the 2018 Bavarian election, this trope shifted to the AfD as a significant threat to the mainstream parties in Germany. By showing the party as a threat to the mainstream, the appeal of the AfD’s ideas were still minimized, but the media also revealed that it was taking the party more seriously. This transition culminated in the reporting on the 2019 Thuringian election into the trope of AfD as invoking the Nazi regime. By connecting the AfD to the legacy of the

Nazi regime through a focus on Höcke and the AfD’s appeal to German expellees, the DW and

NYT both complete the transition from treating the AfD as a catastrophic event to taking it seriously as a rising threat on the far right. In this way, the shift between the aforementioned

29 dominant tropes in the reporting on these elections, reveal a shift in the way the media reported on the rise of the AfD which was just as important as shifts in the narratives this thesis explored.

There are important divergences and similarities in the reporting by the Deutsche Welle and New York Times which are interesting to note. Whereas the NYT portrayed all three elections through a simplified lens such as when Bennhold wrote that the Bavarian election was a

“referendum on Merkel” (Bennhold “Migration”), the DW showed important narrative shifts such as the dangerous radicalization of the AfD. Instead of explaining the more complex finer details of the German political landscape, both the NYT and DW opted for more simplified narratives, but the DW did go more into detail. This was shown through the discussion of the

2019 Thuringian Election where the DW importantly focused on German expellees as a potentially vital demographic for the AfD’s political success. In the reporting of the 2019 election, the narrative of the DW became more politically charged. This reveals an important distinction between the two sources that shows the closer proximity and deeper insight of the

DW regarding German culture. In this way, the divergence and similarities also reflect the differences between an American based news company the NYT, and the German state funded

DW and how this impacts their reporting.

Merkel’s decline, the uniqueness of the AfD’s political ideology, and the widening divide between former East and West German states became major narratives in the reporting of each media outlet. This provides insight into some of the narrative themes that dominate political reporting about the AfD in America, and it helps to reveal the significance of such narratives as each media organization engaged with the impact of the AfD in German politics.

In each of the goals of this paper, there were varying degrees of success in identifying clear distinctions between the NYT and DW’s reporting and the effects that this has on the

American public. For future studies, it would be interesting to build on these insights and explore additional media outlets and narratives. For instance, further exploration of sympathetic narratives of the AfD, a focus on its voter base might reveal insight into American response to the far-right ideology of the AfD. Due to the unique political situation of both the United States and

Germany, this line of experimenting on subjects by exposing them to different media narratives and tropes to see what effect that has on their perception may be especially pertinent.

Furthermore, beyond the scope of this paper, it may also be important to look towards alternative media sources and the narratives they produce due to the growing decentralization of news propagation being propelled by the internet. In any case, it is clear that the AfD and the media’s reaction to it remains an interesting field of study as it continues to remain a formidable piece of

German politics.

It is important to note these avenues of future research and academic inquiry due to the important narratives this thesis has picked up on. When we view the media sources selected and analyzed by this thesis, it becomes clear that the public’s view of the AfD is possibly shaped by those narratives. That warrants further inquiry due to the incredible importance of the response to growing extremism and the political and cultural forces it represents. While it is beyond the scope of this thesis to tackle that problem in its entirety, this thesis has provided some more academic basis for the continued exploration of this problem in the way it relates to media narratives and framing. Hopefully, it will only be another piece of the growing library of academic writings on the AfD, because the media narratives from the DW and NYT as well as other media outlets will continue to be important lenses through which the American public views the AfD for the foreseeable future.

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